Why I Am Not a "Progressive"

I noticed that a few folks have been taking the
"Progressive Quiz" found
here;
it's part of a
project of the Center for American Progress (CAP), designed to
measure the acceptability of, and prospects for, the "progressive"
ideology in America.

When taking the quiz, you're asked to "agree less" or "agree more", on a
0-10 scale, with forty assertions; after that, you're assigned
a score between 0 and 400, measuring how "progressive" you are.
I tried it, and gave up about 10 questions in. I may get around
to explaining why later on.

Aside:
I can't resist, by the way, putting those quotes around "progressive".
I know the term has a long history, and in theory, it means something
specific. But to me, its current-day usage
is mainly a marketing-buzzword effort to avoid more conventional
political terms that are (deservedly)
out of favor with the public. And (in fact)
one of the main
things you can read about at the CAP site is how easily
you can get Americans to swallow "progressivism" as opposed
to (say) "liberalism".

The rise of progressivism in America is reflected more starkly in direct
ratings of various ideological approaches. Today, more than two-thirds
of Americans rate a "progressive" approach to politics favorably, a
25-point increase in favorability over the last five years, with gains
coming primarily from those who were previously unaware of the term.
"Progressive" now equals "conservative" in terms of overall public
favorability (67 percent, respectively).

Um, hooray; at least for now, they've found more acceptable marketese
for the same old crapola. [End of Aside]

CAP's report
on the "State of American Political Ideology, 2009" contains
the 40 assertions. They are, CAP says, "equally divided between
progressive and conservative beliefs." You can also find out how
Americans agreeed/disagreed with the assertions.

Some observations:

The poll shows one thing conclusively:
you can get Americans to agree with
just about anything, if you phrase it pleasantly enough. Respondents
could score any assertion from 0 (total disagreement) to 10 (total
agreement), with a 5 scored as neutral. In the survey results, the
average "agreement" score ranged from 7.9 to 4.6.
Only one assertion got that 4.6, and it was the only
one that garnered less than the "neutral" score of 5:

Homosexuality is unnatural and should not be
accepted by society.

According to CAP, the average American mildly disagrees
with that (allegedly) "conservative" assertion. One
assertion (see below) got a precisely-neutral 5.0 score; the remaining
38 assertions all scored on the "agree" end of the spectrum.

One thing you'll note is how "progressivism" piggybacks on
environmentalism; Americans love to buy into sounds-good
"green" slogans, and "progressives" will be happy to claim
such sentiments as their own. Here's the assertion with the highest
level of agreement (7.9) in CAP's polling:

Americans should adopt a more sustainable lifestyle
by conserving energy and consuming fewer goods.

This screams for some explanatory text to be tacked on:

By the way, economists call
"consuming fewer goods" a "recession"; we're in one now. Like
it?

Posing things that way might have driven down the agreement level a
tad. Unfortunately, CAP didn't do things my way.

CAP is not above presenting the status quo as "progressive". For
example, this got a high level of agreement (7.6):

Government investments in education, infrastructure,
and science are necessary to ensure America's
long-term economic growth.

But all but the hardest-of-hardcore libertarians will agree with that to
some extent. Similarly, this one got a 7.1:

Government regulations are necessary to keep businesses in
check and protect workers and consumers.

Other than anarchists,
is there anyone out there who thinks that all government
regulations are unnecessary? I wouldn't think so, but 12% of their poll respondents
scored this on the "disagree" end of the scale.)

(If I'm remembering
correctly, this is the statement that made me bail out on the quiz in
disgust. I'm sorry, but mild theoretical agreement with some
regulation does not make me a "progressive", and I'm not gonna
buy into a methodology that makes it appear so.)

Some questions are really loaded, with question-begging
wording that practically dares you to disagree:

Our country has gone too far in mixing politics
and religion and forcing religious values on people.

No way, dude! In fact, I think it hasn't gone far enough!

Amazingly, this only garnered mild agreement (5.1) with roughly
equal percentages on "agree" and "disagree" sides.

People who want to cut back on US world-saving
will find a small measure of cheer.
For example, this one is billed as a
"conservative" assertion, and it got the highest agreement
score (7.4) of all 20
"conservative" assertions:

America has taken too large a role in solving the
world's problems and should focus more at home.

And this "progressive" assertion
scored lowest of all "progressive" assertions, getting
a neutral 5.0:

America should spend more to help meet the
basic economic, health, and education needs of
people around the world.

Not even a survey designed by "progressives" can sell this
particular flavor of interventionism.

Libertarians will find plenty to moan about. This scored a solid 7.0
agreement:

There should be stronger regulation of sex and
violence in popular culture and on the Internet.

And even this scored on the "agree" side (5.1):

It is unpatriotic to criticize our government
leaders or our military during a time of war.

On the other hand, libertarians can cheer themselves up
by looking at the 6.8 agreement with:

Free trade is good for America because it creates
new markets for our goods and services and lowers
costs for consumers.

This one got a 6.5:

Government spending is almost always wasteful
and inefficient.

Also with a 6.5:

Free market solutions are better than government
at creating jobs and economic growth.

And I was kind of surprised that even this scored well, with a 6.1:

Social Security should be reformed to allow
workers to invest some of their contributions in
individual accounts.

57% of respondents agreeed with this, as opposed to only
24% on the "disagree" side. If you buy that, it leads
one to wonder how inept
George W. Bush had to be in order to lose on this issue.

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. An interesting
idea, poor execution, nevertheless interesting results.
If you want to do this sort of thing to yourself,
I recommend the
World's Smallest
Political Quiz. Probably just as slanted, but much faster
to complete.

URLs du Jour

Jennifer Rubin—can she really be just one person? Here
she is commenting on the Obama Administration's vague proposals
to play Big Brother with executive salaries paid by (what used to be
known as) private companies.

Apparently the game plan is to freak out everyone who works for any
financial institution and encourage them to pursue other lines of work.
Good thing we don't have to rely on these institutions for our economic
recovery. Oh wait.

And this was posted at 4:08am on Sunday morning; how, exactly,
does Jennifer
manage to make more sense at that hour than the Administration
does during the normal work day?

At Big Hollywood, Jeffrey Jena translates
what it means when a politician says he or she "takes full
responsibility" for some recent f-up.

Generally speaking it means; "I have been caught and there is so much
evidence against me that only the feeble of mind would buy my defense,
so I admit it was my fault. Can we now forget about it?"

You might want to keep that handy by the chair in which you
typically watch TV news.

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